Is there a simple term for the question this one was closed as a dupe of other than "the question this one was closed as a dupe of", because "the question this one was closed as a dupe of" is pretty long and unwieldy and much in need of a simpler term than "the question this one was closed as a dupe of".

I asked Opposite/inverse of duplicate before finding this question; while mostly similar, it has a few thoughts and words this post doesn't (this one as well has some mine doesn't).
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zpletanApr 25 '12 at 1:50

Will you only accept a single word? If not please re-tag your question.
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hippietrailOct 4 '12 at 5:43

1

@hippietrail: Duplicated is a good word for what I was looking for, and though you'd normally use it in conjunction with the and question, I still feel like it's one word. But by all means, feel free to retag if you disagree. By your rep here, you seem to be a regular, while I'm just a newbie who poked his head in to ask one question.
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sbiOct 4 '12 at 8:56

In the context of SE questions there's often a certain amount of debate over whether the later question is identical to the one cited as a duplicate, so I tend to avoid the term original.

Admittedly this approach deprives me of a convenient noun form, but I think it's less contentious to refer to it as the earlier question. But if you really want a noun I suggest antecedent.

Ideally on SE one would like to refer to the earlier question as the archetype, to imply we've already got a generic/canonical answer for any questions similar to the one currently being flagged as a later duplicate. Sadly, that isn't always the case, so people can often argue theirs isn't a duplicate.

Well, "earlier question" is a bit vague, but it seems to fit. (BTW, I'm not really after a single word, I just couldn't find a better tag and using only terminology seemed incorrect to me.)
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sbiFeb 15 '12 at 13:42

Go for antecedent then (or if you've got sufficient confidence in the earlier answers to cover everything in any related later questions, go ahead and call them the archetypes :)
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FumbleFingersFeb 15 '12 at 13:47

The notion of duplication and redundancy are very often justified in prose, but I agree that a pithy term is ideal here. Specifically, we want a noun describing "that which is immediately deprecated because it contains a strict subset of another preceding [concept or idea]."

Picking through Everything2's lexicon on writeup deletion (a site based on the concepts of social karma and article deprecation far predating StackOverflow and StackExchange), their chosen phrasing for this case is, loosely speaking, when one's article is "superseded by an existing writeup."

I say this "lacks precision" because the order of operations is reversed in the case of a question or writeup that is instantly deprecated by another, previous question or writeup. It isn't a case of the previous "forcing out" or "displacing" the new one as inferior (implying subsequent action), so much as the new duplicate is, in fact, deprecating itself by virtue of not deferring to the previous one.

A word suggestion I would put forth here is not supersede, then, but subsede. This isn't currently a word in the dictionary. But, by our prior understanding of Latin prefixes and verbs, this would etymologically mean:

"sub" (under) + "sedere" (to sit).

Or, literally, "sit under or undermine" the subsedee, as the subsedent or subsedent question.

But, I digress. The authoritative, original, or (bending the rules again) supersedent question should be expressively sufficient for your purposes when referring to the original authoritative source deprecating a now-unoriginal question or idea. I'd shy away from using the duplicated question only insofar as it's technically unclear, without additional context, which of the now-duplicate questions you're referring to.

This seems to assume that the new question is granted preferential status over the original question. On SE, the opposite is true: unless the older question is exceptionally bad, it's almost always the new question that is closed-as-duplicate, and the term the OP wants is for the older question.
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MarthaªOct 22 '12 at 21:09